Tips to Encourage Summer Reading for Dyslexic Kids and Others, too!
The Importance of Summer Reading for ALL Kids
Need tips to encourage summer reading for dyslexic kids? With summer vacation, you might be concerned about something known as “summer slide.” This term refers to many students’ loss of some learned skills from the previous school year. However, for dyslexic students, this time of “learning loss” can be even more significant than for typical students. As a result, there is a particular need to help prevent this “summer slide” for these unique learners.
In this timely article, we are providing you with some practical tips and strategies to encourage summer reading for dyslexic students. These tips will help your children avoid the dreaded “summer slide.” Also, we hope you will find the list below easy to implement right away. As a result, not only will these practical tips help your dyslexic child. In addition, your other children will benefit, too!
Practical Tips to Encourage Summer Reading for Dyslexic Kids
1. Allow Kids to Find Books That Excite & Inspire Them!
First, always allow children to choose their own books to read. Of course, you can make suggestions, but please permit them to select the titles that appeal to THEM. With reluctant readers, consider selections about challenged learners. In addition, you might suggest non-fiction titles on a particular topic of interest. Surprisingly, many children are not interested in fiction but prefer “how-to” books instead.
2. Let Them Create Their Own Summer Reading Schedules.
Secondly, discuss with your child how he would like to manage his reading over the summer. Perhaps doing chores in the morning with reading for pleasure at a set time in the afternoon is the preferred way for your child. As another option, reading a book from Monday to Thursday with a related, hands-on activity on Friday might be a good idea. Regardless of the plan, allow your child to decide how to manage his summer reading.
3. Provide Related Sensory Experiences
Multi-sensory literacy experiences are especially important for kids with dyslexia. As a result, provide sensory-appealing activities that relate to the topic or characters in the current book your child is reading. For young children, adding sounds or using finger puppets for animal characters might work well. For older children, creating a comic strip version of the book’s plot might be a good idea.
4. Remember to Celebrate the Completion of a Book!
Plan to enjoy a “reward” for completing each book your child reads. This can be something simple, inexpensive, and agreed upon ahead of time that will be an incentive for finishing each book. For instance, plan a trip to a library not previously visited. As another idea, you might agree to your child’s selection of a new e-book by his favorite author.
5. Read & Lead by Example.
Finally, you may already know that kids imitate what they see and experience. So, be sure YOU demonstrate your love of reading so that your child will see that it is important to you. Moreover, what is important to parents will become important to their children.
Sources
Tips to Inspire Summer Reading in Dyslexic Students from The Dyslexia Resource
Learn simple tips and strategies to help kids with dyslexia and others love to read!
Strategies for Summer Reading for Children with Dyslexia by Dale S. Brown, Reading Rockets
Taking Time for Summer Fun from The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity
Ultimately, individuals with dyslexics may have to be more deliberate with their time and resources, but they deserve playful, engaging and leisurely summers as much as (or more than) anyone!
